Unfortunately, laws have not kept pace with these advancements, and in many countries there are very few limits on what scientists are allowed to do. As you will read about below, extremely creepy human-animal hybrids are now being created in laboratories all over the planet. And this is just the stuff that is publicly admitted. Can you imagine what kind of sick and twisted experiments are taking place in the dark corners of secret labs that nobody knows about? And what happens if these creatures get out into the wild and start mating?

At that point, it would be nearly impossible to “put the genie back into the bottle”. Scientists seem very eager to test the limits of what is possible, but what they are unleashing may have consequences that none of us ever dreamed possible.

According to LifeNews.com, researchers at the University of Wisconsin have successfully transferred cells from human embryos into the brains of mice. Those cells began to grow and develop, and they actually made the mice smarter… We are corrupting nature, and yet very few people seem alarmed. When the Daily Mail reported back in 2011 that scientists in the UK had created “more than 150" human-animal hybrid embryos, hardly anyone got upset about it…

Speaking in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bernanke also warned that the full impact on the economy of steep government spending cuts initiated in March was yet to be seen, underscoring the need for more Fed support. “Both the employment side and the inflation side are saying that we need to be more accommodating,” he said, answering questions after a speech.

President Anibal Cavaco Silva proposed a cross-party agreement between the ruling coalition and opposition Socialists to guarantee wide support for the austerity measures needed for Portugal to exit its bailout next year, followed by elections. The decision was a warning shot to all the leading parties and it indicates that the president does not think any of them is capable of ruling effectively until the bailout is due to finish in June 2014.

Cavaco Silva’s move prompted sharp criticism in a country that has descended into its worst economic slump since the 1970s under the weight of austerity imposed by the bailout.

And unlike some disciplines, which acknowledge that there’s a huge gap between the scholarly knowledge and policy advice, economists have been anything but shy about asserting their authority. As we can see from the current dismal state of economic affairs, economies are incredibly complex systems, and policymakers who are forced to act in the face of this uncertainty and complexity want guidance.

And over the last half century, neoclassical economists have not only been more than happy to offer it, but largely been able to marginalize any other disciplines or approaches, giving them a virtual monopoly on economic policy advice. But there are two big problems with this. First, despite economists’ calming assurances, we still know little about how economies actually work and the effect of policies. If we did, then economists should have sounded the alarm bells to head off the financial collapse and Great Recession.

But even more problematic, even though most economists know better, they present to the public, the media and politicians a simplified, vulgar version of neoclassical economics — what can be called Econ 101 — that leads policymakers astray. Economists fear that if they really expose policymakers to all the contradictions, uncertainties and complications of “Advanced Econ,” the latter will go off track — embracing protectionism, heavy-handed “industrial policy” or even socialism. In fact, the myths of Econ 101 already lead policymakers dangerously off track, with tragic results for the economy and everyday Americans.

The legislation covers clergy and lay people who live and work in Vatican City and is different from the canon law which covers the universal Catholic Church. The bulk of the Vatican's penal code is based on the 1889 Italian code. Many of the new provisions were necessary to bring the city state's legal system up to date after the Holy See signed international treaties, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Others were necessary to comply with international norms to fight money-laundering, part of the Vatican's push toward financial transparency.

Paolo Gabriele, the butler for then-Pope Benedict XVI, was tried and convicted by a Vatican court of stealing Benedict's personal papers and giving them to an Italian journalist, Gianluigi Nuzzi. Using the documents, Nuzzi published a blockbuster book on the petty turf wars, bureaucratic dysfunction and allegations of corruption and homosexual liaisons that afflict the highest levels of Catholic Church governance.

Gabriele, who said he wanted to expose the "evil and corruption" that plagued the Holy See, was convicted of aggravated theft and sentenced to 18 months in the Vatican's police barracks. Benedict eventually pardoned him and he is now a free man. But his crime devastated the Vatican, shattering the confidentiality that typically governs correspondence with the pope.

In an indication of how serious the Vatican considers such confidentiality, the penalties for violations of the new law are stiff: Anyone who reveals or receives confidential information or documentation risks six months to two years in prison and a €2,000 euro ($2,500) fine; the penalty goes up to eight years in prison if the material concerns the "fundamental interests" of the Holy See or its diplomatic relations with other countries.

"Iran has ambitious ballistic missile and space launch development programs and continues to attempt to increase the range, lethality, and accuracy of its ballistic missile force," the report says. "Iran could develop and test an ICBM capable of reaching the United States by 2015."

A source at Russia's Federal Guard Service (FSO), which is in charge of safeguarding Kremlin communications and protecting President Vladimir Putin, claimed that the return to typewriters has been prompted by the publication of secret documents by WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing website, as well as Edward Snowden, the fugitive US intelligence contractor.

The FSO is looking to spend 486,000 roubles – around £10,000 – on a number of electric typewriters, according to the site of state procurement agency, zakupki.gov.ru. The notice included ribbons for German-made Triumph Adlew TWEN 180 typewriters, although it was not clear if the typewriters themselves were this kind.

The service declined to comment on the notice, which was posted last week. However an FSO source told Izvestiya newspaper: “After scandals with the distribution of secret documents by WikiLeaks, the exposes by Edward Snowden, reports about Dmitry Medvedev being listened in on during his visit to the G20 summit in London, it has been decided to expand the practice of creating paper documents.”

Unlike printers, every typewriter has its own individual pattern of type so it is possible to link every document to a machine used to type it.

And here is yet more proof. This true story will astound you. Waking up on the organ harvesting table... A woman named Colleen Burns recently opened her eyes to find herself on an operating table in a hospital in Syracuse, New York. Looking around, she noticed that she was the subject of the operation. It turns out doctors were about to harvest her organs and send them to other waiting surgeons who would transplant them into other patients.

This is not fiction. It was covered by ABC News and several other news sources. It really happened. And how did it happen? Doctors falsely pronounced her dead by fraudulently claiming she had suffered "cardiopulmonary arrest" and "irreversible brain damage." This gave them the medical justification to start slicing away even while the woman's heart was still beating.

Organ transplants are a hugely profitable industry - largely because they get the organs for free. Patients who are killed by these doctors are never paid for their organs. The fact that they "donate" them actually means they are donating their immensely valuable organs to a for-profit system that's going to earn potentially millions of dollars off the organs of a single donor.

The proposal was met with hostility in Germany, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert saying, “In our view the Commission proposal gives the Commission a competence which it cannot have based on the current treaties.”

Dr Gunther Dunkel, President of the influential VÖB (the German Association of Public Banks) also criticised the plan saying, “It is not up for discussion for us, that funds gained through the work of German banks are used to contribute to the rescue of banks in other Member States”.

Open Europe published a flash analysis in response to the plan, which concluded, “The eurozone is yet to face up to the fundamental problem of reconciling the economic realities within the existing legal and political limits – this proposal is another example of attempting to circumvent them in another ad-hoc way.”

The analysis was cited on the Telegraph live blog and the Guardian live blog. Writing on his Telegraph blog, Open Europe’s Mats Persson describes the Commission’s plan as “a legal stretch” and argues, “The more the line between the eurozone and the single market is blurred, the more likely the UK is to leave.”

The protests this summer, vast and angry, is the Brazilian parallel to the 2011 Arab spring. It is a leaderless movement organized through social networks, which is its strength. It may not be able to shape politics, but it can certainly exert pressure. It can mobilize the street.

It began in São Paulo on June 6 with a march of only 500 people protesting against an increase in bus fares. Since then, however, it has grown into a conflagration of discontent. On June 17, 200,000 people protested in Rio de Janeiro, Belém and about 20 other cities, and by June 20 some 1.4 million protesters had taken to the streets in more than 120 cities. Protesters danced on the roof of the congress building in the capital Brasília, creating images that have since been broadcast around the world. They are the tour dates of a popular uprising that newspapers are presenting as proudly as they do the victories of the Seleção. The people are agitated, and the political world is afraid.

Almost 200 members of the National Congress are under investigation. One lawmaker, who is accused of murder, allegedly dismembered his political rival with a chainsaw. Another moved $10 million earmarked for a road construction project to an overseas bank account. A third politician is thought to have ordered the abduction of three priests who had campaigned on behalf of the landless.

Tens of thousands of union members marched throughout the country, blocking roads and grinding traffic to a crawl in dozens of cities. Bus drivers, metal workers and other unionized workers took to the streets as part of a one-day strike. Labor leaders are pushing for workers’ rights to take center stage in the national debate which emerged after huge protests rocked the country last month, Reuters reported.

Brazil’s unions, which represent around one-tenth of the country’s workforce, appear to be trying to give the protests direction while they fight for political and social goals. Union strikers and other demonstrators partially or completely blocked 40 interstate and intercity highways across 14 states during Thursday’s “Day of Struggle,” AP reported. Protesters also set tires ablaze on a freeway outside of Rio.

Since mass demonstrations began across the country, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has sought to defuse the situation with several new policy proposals. One of his plans includes an investment of $23 billion on public transportation projects - a major source of contention in cities like Sao Paulo. Brazil’s government has also responded by pledging to funnel oil wealth into education and medical services, including importing thousands of doctors from abroad to work in underserved regions of the country.

In one of the unpublished studies, researchers made a human artificial chromosome in the laboratory from chemical building blocks rather than chipping away at an existing human chromosome, indicating the increasingly powerful technology behind the new field of synthetic biology.

The development comes as the Government announces today that it will invest tens of millions of pounds in synthetic biology research in Britain, including an international project to construct all the 16 individual chromosomes of the yeast fungus in order to produce the first synthetic organism with a complex genome.

A synthetic yeast with man-made chromosomes could eventually be used as a platform for making new kinds of biological materials, such as antibiotics or vaccines, while human artificial chromosomes could be used to introduce healthy copies of genes into the diseased organs or tissues of people with genetic illnesses, scientists said.

Thanks to the mindless Rambo-ing up, the “surrounding threats” are now mostly the once-peaceable, now angry residents who, in a letter from Democratic legislators, blast the company’s “confrontational and incendiary step that will clearly do more to intimidate local citizens and increase local tensions than it will to make you, your staff, or your equipment any safer.”

“Some of the local people are wondering what the heck? It’s come to a sad situation when you’ve got to have a machine gun to protect a business that people around here don’t want.”

Dr Nick Striegel, assistant state veterinarian for the Colorado Department of Agriculture, said Wednesday the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus, also known as PED, was thought to exist only in Europe and China, but Colorado and 14 other states began reporting the virus in April, and officials confirmed its presence in May. The virus causes severe diarrhea, vomiting and severe dehydration in pigs, and can be fatal.

"It has been devastating for those producers where it has been diagnosed. It affects nursing pigs, and in some places, there has been 100 percent mortality," he said.

The figure has risen from 25 per cent in 1988 and just 11 per cent in 1979. The figures also show that one in four new mothers were born outside the UK in 2012, compared to 17.7 per cent a decade earlier. If the trend continues at the current rate, the majority of children will be born to parents who are not married by 2016. Conservative MPs and experts warned that the stark decline of marriage is likely to lead to more family breakdowns and damage children's prospects.

Tim Loughton, the former Children's minister, called on the government to introduce tax breaks for married couples to help stop the decline. He said: "If people are prepared to make a public declaration to each other in front of their friends and family they are more likely to stay together. Without marriage people drift in and out of relationships very easily.

"In families where parents break up children do less well at school, are more likely to suffer mental health problems and are more likely to have substance abuse problems."